Hazel had felt goosebumps all over her body just from his slight smile. Her gaze had wandered over his slightly too long, light-brown hair, his fair skin, and his dark blue eyes…and hadsimply ignored her professor’s follow-up question, until Gareth turned from her and gave the correct answer.
To this day, she didn’t know if he’d deliberately distracted her to score points in class. Probably he had. The thought had made her smile and ultimately led to them starting a game without rules.
A game they’d both lost.
She blinked, pulled herself out of her thoughts, and focused on present-day Gareth, who wasn’t smiling, not even slightly. He’d probably become a grown-up. She just wished his body hadn’t. If twenty-five-year-old Gareth had put women’s hearts within a two-mile radius in jeopardy, thirty-two-year-old Gareth was a pure imposition. His hair was now razor-short. His face was narrower, his stubbly chin more chiseled, and his shoulders broader…and it didn’t help that she knew he looked even better without clothes. What did help was that she was incredibly angry at him.
How could the asshole believe she’d tell her clients to badmouth him in interviews? Yes, they had a…complicated relationship, but she wasn’t that type of person. Until yesterday, she would have claimed that Gareth knew that. Because heknewher.
She swallowed and abruptly turned her face away. No, that wasn’t true. Hehadknown her. There was a difference.
“Oh, the boss is coming over,” Moreau muttered. “This can’t be good.”
Hazel’s back tensed and she clenched the fabric of her dress.
“What did you do wrong, Fox? He certainly won’t talk to Hazel voluntarily.”
“Nothing!” The center shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Maybe he heard you say that he sleeps in a suit.”
“That couldn’t have made him angry,” Moreau replied dryly. “It’s certainly the truth.”
No, it wasn't. Gareth slept naked.
“I don’t care,” Fox hissed through clenched teeth. “He’ll be here in a second, and…”
He fell silent because Gareth had reached them — and completely ignored the two players. Instead, he leaned over her shoulder.
She felt it more than saw it. The warmth radiating from his body competed with the bright August sun. His toes touched her heels. His breath was feather-light against her ear as he whispered, barely audibly, “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. I went too far. That wasn’t fair of me.”
Hazel’s breath caught in her throat. He didn’t touch her. His hand hovered over her shoulder, but his fingertips never reached her skin. His lips were close enough that his words tickled the delicate skin behind her ear but didn’t touch it.
It felt intimate. Far too intimate.
“Okay,” she whispered, hating how breathless she sounded.
Gareth nodded. His rough chin brushed her cheek for a second, barely perceptibly, but he didn’t reply. He leaned back, and then just kept walking as if nothing had happened.
Hazel’s shoulders sagged, and she let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “He could have said hello,” Fox complained.
“Yeah,” Moreau agreed. “The boss is rude.”
Hazel swallowed and turned her gaze to the spot where Gareth had disappeared into the crowd. Yes, Gareth didn’t care what people thought of him, but apparently, he did care whatshethought of him.
She rubbed her tingling neck and massaged the slight tug in her diaphragm. Then, she took a deep breath.
He had apologized. Who could have expected that?
Now she almost felt sorry for denigrating him to his sister.
Chapter Four
Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork
For short: SCHIT
Paragraph 4:
Neither Party A nor Party B may go behind the back of the contractual partner to friends and family and reveal their faux pas.
